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Post by quincannon on Dec 15, 2018 21:24:11 GMT
The British Navy would stop ships and seize by impressing anyone who they thought to be a British citizen. The RN was always short of sailors, and the practice carried out on the high seas was similar in nature to using the press gangs ashore to fill out ship's crews.
Problem was that all of us were once British, and the RN did not really give a rats ass who they rounded up. Any warm body would do, and while they may have found a few real Brits serving aboard an American flagged vessel, the vast majority of those impressed were American citizens. The practice in American eyes was nothing short of the crime of kidnapping, which in fact it was regardless of where the kidnapping took place, in British ports, or on American flagged ships.
From the start the American Navy was an all volunteer service, as was the American Merchant Marine. The RN on the other hand has used press gangs to fill their ships since the days of Drake and Elizabeth I.
We really had no need for British trained sailors Ian. We had been a British colony for nearly two hundred years before we declared independence, and from well before the revolution had a large, well developed merchant marine, and equally well developed fishing fleets, plus a large number of shipyards, skilled shipbuilders and support personnel like chandlers etc. Boston, Baltimore, Norfolk, and Philadelphia were shipbuilding centers long before 1775, not to mention that we had all the resources needed for shipbuilding, whereas the RN had to import nearly all the resources necessary to build and maintain a fleet.
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Post by yanmacca on Dec 16, 2018 20:23:48 GMT
Chuck, what I was thinking of was the American born sailors who had previously been in the RN, simply changing sides when conflict began. Or like George Washington who used to be a British office, but ended up commanding the rebellions colonials.
The US Navy didn't just materialize surly, there must have been a period where peace time sailors were taught how to crew war ships and old salts must have had a role in this training and these men must have served in the Great British Royal Navy.
I didn't think we had to import stuff to build our war ships, we had plenty of wood and hundreds of year experience too. I do agree with the press gangs though, what a horrible thing to suffer, you nip out for a pint down the local and some swines come along and knock you out and you wake up on a ship. I suppose when you controlled the world, you need a great navy and we needed one too with our colonies, I suppose if we stuck to volunteers, we would have not had the man power to be such a strong force in the world.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 16, 2018 23:55:51 GMT
Ian: We are talking 1812-15 here. Most of those who had served in the Continental Navy of 1775-1783 were gone. Other than gunnery there was not much difference between a warship and a merchant in those days. Sailing was sailing.
George Washington was never a British officer. He was an officer in the Virginia Militia. He wanted to be a British officer quite badly, but was turned down, for reasons I am not familiar with. Had he become a British officer, there is absolutely no doubt in my mind that he would have remained one.
One of the thriving trades we had with the mother country before the revolution was in lumber, hemp, tar, and pitch, all of which we sent to England, as we were forbidden to have any other customers for it. Those materials sustained the Royal Navy for nearly two hundred years.
Actually you did have plenty of wood, but most of it was not the right type for shipbuilding. When you cut a tree down in the UK it took a hundred or more years to replace it. We did not have that problem.
It may interest you to know that "Old Ironsides" (USS Constitution) got its name, as did the others of the first six, by being built from Southern Live Oak which only grows in the swampland along the coast of Georgia. It was so strong that most times a cannon ball shot at it would bounce off, so the name.
Impressing seaman was a government sanctioned criminal act.
Strictly speaking the United States Navy did materialize. It started from scratch, and it was our second president, Adams, that insured the first six ships were completed and the Captains selected. We built frigates, one each, in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Norfolk, Baltimore, and Portsmouth.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 17, 2018 16:39:10 GMT
As a post script to you Ian, you must recall that the Continental Navy was disbanded in 1783, and the U S Navy not established until 1798, at the outset of the undeclared naval war against France. That was short lived but had a few notable moments like Constellation whipping the horse piss out of L'Insurgente.
The frigates we produced, especially the first six were tough customers, to such an extent that RN frigate captains were instructed not to take them on in a one on one battle. They were bigger, faster, more heavily protected, and more well armed than anything the RN had. To be fair though the frigate in the RN was a secondary warship designed more as a scout and commerce protector than anything else. Ours on the other hand were our main line of naval defense, We knew we could not match anyone in a warship to warship building competition, so we set out to build the best all around warship possible. If I were to bring the same concept forward a century, the intention was to build a pocket battleship,like the Admiral Graf Spee, that could out gun anything that could catch her and out run any warship that over matched her.
Why, one might ask, if we were building such good ships, and our shipbuilding industry was so well developed, did we not engage in a naval arms race with Britain and France? Well that answer is really quite simple. The Jefferson administration wanted no parts of a Navy until the Barbary corsairs forced the issue, and it was either pay tribute (lots of money), or spend the same money on building and maintaining a moderately sized Navy. The additional factor was, that the very thing that made our frigates so formidable, the Southern Live Oak, was only found in one place, the godforsaken coast of Georgia in swampland that nature and disease made it very difficult to extract from.
It might interest some of our Constitutional scholars here resident, that the U S Constitution gives the government no authority to build a Navy, none at all, and still so. So when you term yourself a strict constructionist, you are giving up a Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force. Had it not been for Adams ignoring Congress and the Constitution and establishing a Navy on Presidential authority alone, like any good Hamiltonian Federalist would do, and ignoring the bleating bull shit from the Republicans (not the same Republicans), we would have been in a hell of a pickle, The lesson is be careful what you wish for.
If you are interested in how these things came to be, and how we could build a navy in a relative short period of time, read "Six Frigates" it is a comprehensive study of the matter.
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Post by yanmacca on Dec 17, 2018 19:48:35 GMT
Chuck thanks for the above, I really think that this period of American naval history has really been ignored by the historians and if I recall US ships operated against Tripoli and Algiers. The JPJ also fired upon little Whitehaven in the north of England.
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Post by quincannon on Dec 17, 2018 20:14:20 GMT
Nothing ever changes all that much Ian. The terrorists of today were the pirates of yesteryear.
JPJ's incursions on the coast of England and Scotland were very important to us. They were the start of a change in attitude toward the Revolutionary War in the eyes of both the British Government and people. They were starting to think in terms of is this war worth it in time, treasure, and trouble. It turned out that it was not. John Paul (Paul was his given name) a Scot, had no love for the English. He ran afoul of the law, came to America, added Jones to his name, and went on to be the model of an officer in the Continental Navy, whose example was carried over into the new U S Navy by people like Truxton, Dale, Preble, Decatur, Barry, and Bainbridge. His tomb at Annapolis is probably the most sacred place in the Navy, even surpassing USS Arizona. His second ship (his first was Ranger), Bonhomme Richard's wreck was recently discovered off the coast of Scotland. It sunk despite defeating HMS Serapis, just after the battle.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Dec 17, 2018 20:46:46 GMT
The name live oak comes from the fact that evergreen oaks remain green and "live" throughout winter, when other oaks are dormant and leafless. The name is used mainly in here in North America, where evergreen oaks are widespread in warmer areas along the Atlantic coast from southeast Virginia to Florida, west along the Gulf Coast to Louisiana and Mexico, and across the southwest to California.
The square around the Alamo is loaded with them as well.
When the term live oak is used in a specific rather than general sense, it most commonly refers to the southern live oak (Quercus virginiana), the first species so named, and an icon of the Old South. The southern live oak is the official state tree of Georgia. The coast and coastal islands of GA and SC are loaded with them. There are many from Williamsburg and southeast of there. I have two transplants on my property In Caroline County, VA. These two were hand dug in Williamsburg, with permission, I was not shot at. The Post oak is very similar. Evergreen oak species are also common in parts of southern Europe and south Asia, for the sake of completeness.
Regards, Tom
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Post by quincannon on Dec 17, 2018 22:03:31 GMT
Problem was Tom that we did not have Florida, Louisiana, and Texas to pick over at the time. Humphreys, who designed United States and Constitution, and eventually supervised construction of all of the first six specified Southern Live Oak, sent parties out all along the coast, and only found suitable specimens in Georgia. Perhaps it was a matter of size. I just don't know. What I do know is that they had one hell of a time getting them out of the swamps, and that delayed construction quite a bit.
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Post by deadwoodgultch on Dec 17, 2018 23:08:06 GMT
You are absolutely correct, Savannah and the area between there and what is now Hilton Head was ground zero. Whitemarsh Island, Wilmington Island, Skidaway Island, and Tybee Island were heavily harvested. I met some folks from Pooler and Garden City telling me about the heavy harvest through the 1850's and the mills. All you have to do is look at the Savannah National Wildlife Preserve and their own Alligator Alley and you can imagine the hardships to harvest. I spent 4 AT's there. I was not attempting to take away from your presentation as I know the concentration is Charleston and south. They are beautiful trees and I always wanted a few for decoration, alas I wont live long enough to see mine full grown, I love my Whites and Post.
Regards, Tom
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Post by quincannon on Dec 17, 2018 23:21:43 GMT
I think they are too Tom, and what I posted was to add some clarity to what confronted those early Navy shipbuilders.
The Southern Live Oak in the Alamo's Cavalry Courtyard, my daughter tells me, is a favorite place in San Antonio for taking of Prom, Graduation, and Wedding pictures. It is certainly a great setting as is the park behind the Alamo which, as I have said many times, was the place the heaviest fighting took place. Seems ironic for such a setting to be used for such peaceful purposes these days.
One of the great difficulties in procuring the Live Oaks for ship construction was evidently how to transport it up to the northern yards. It had to be done by sea, and possibly a reason why this area was chosen, was ready access to the sea.
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